“Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.” ―Rev. 19:7.
AFTER the destruction of the mystical Babylon, and before the reign of Christ on earth, there will come, descending out of heaven from God, the bride, the Lamb’s wife, that great city, the holy Jerusalem; But prior to this there will be the marriage of the Lamb in heaven. Hence the bride of the Lamb, at that time, prior to Christ’s millennial reign, is seen to be there. This is most important, as showing the pre-millennial resurrection and glorification of all those who are the wife of the Lamb. And inasmuch as they come with Christ immediately upon the marriage in heaven, and before the thousand years of the millennium, that coming of Christ with His saints cannot be, as some imagine, post-millennial, or at the end of the world.
The bridal city, as we shall see, is to come down from heaven and take up her station, not on, but over the millennial earth, and will be the means of ministering glory to it at that especial time. The leaves of its tree of life are for the healing of the nations, showing that it will have real connection with the earth whilst it is still the abode of nations, and that the nations which are upon the earth will stand in need of healing.
As to who they are who will be in this heavenly pre-millennial glory the Word is explicit. In 1 Cor. 15: 23 we read of “Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming.” In 1 Thess. 4 we read of “the dead in Christ;” and of “them also which sleep in Jesus.” These passages, I believe, include (1) all the Old Testament saints who died in faith of a coming Saviour, and (2) all of our own dispensation who believed in Jesus―those who during these eighteen hundred years have owned Him, in this the time of His rejection, and who are spoken of as “them which sleep in Jesus.” These all will be in this heavenly pre-millennial glory.
But not these alone. There will be those who will not have needed resurrection, because they were privileged not to die. Paul had said in 1 Cor. 15, “Behold I show you a mystery.” Was it resurrection? No. Such passages as Matt. 22:30, Luke 20:36, John 5:29, 11:24, showing that resurrection was not the mystery.
The mystery was that there would be some who would be alive and remain at the coming of the Lord, “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51)― “ Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them who have fallen asleep] in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17). All these then, that is, all the “dead in Christ,” and all those living at His coming, will be with Him in this pre-millennial heavenly glory. They, that is, those who died in faith of a coming glory, but who have not yet received the promises, could not be perfected apart from us.
Concerning the bride, prior to this marriage of the Lamb, the sound of the trumpet will be to her as the marriage bells on the nuptial morning. She will rise hearing the Bridegroom’s voice, saying, “Haste, Beloved; come away!” Then her hope will be consummated, her goal reached. The bride greatly rejoiceth because of the Bridegroom’s voice, and the friends of the Bridegroom rejoice. He is altogether lovely; and she is prepared as a bride for her husband.
One of the earliest scenes in this glory is “the marriage supper,” at which the Lamb feasts His bride, also the invited guests. The bride has made herself ready. She is arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of the saints. A feast is for joy. It is moreover a time for fellowship. A marriage feast always supposes others besides the bridegroom and the bride. It indicates the absence of all toil and sorrow―the sweet prevalence of happiness, yea, of love―on the bride and bridegroom’s part, of love in possession of its object, love satisfied. But what tender moral associations are suggested here! For the bride is called the wife of the Lamb, whose sufferings as such were portrayed all through, from the sacrifice of righteous Abel down to the time when Christ offered up Himself―the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. Blessed scene is this marriage supper of the Lamb! What grace and consolation does it imply! What love What joy! A joy expressed in holiest ways, and in the midst of greatest delights. It is then that the bridal song is sung amidst the thousand splendors of the bridal hall.
But seated at the bridal board are those who are “called to the marriage.” In Rev. 19:9 we read, “Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.” The seer, you will observe, is to write it. It is to be noted for himself and for us as of deep interest and solemnity; also of unutterable joy. Especially as there is a peculiar blessedness for those who are called; that is, for those favored ones who are invited to participate in it all. They are not the bride, but are “called to the marriage” as those who are the friends of the Bridegroom, and are “blessed.” Oh, what unutterable delights have we thus in those heavens of heavens which are before us! How varied! how glorious!
The distinction is significant. For there is obviously a difference in persons. But they are all of them risen and glorified saints, equally redeemed, equally with Christ, but known in different relationships; and being heavenly, are all distinguished from those who will occupy, not heaven, but the earth, during the season of its millennial blessedness. We know that even now the Word shows the relationship of bride with. Bridegroom, and body with Head. When we speak of the saved being the bride, or the body of Christ, we mean not that they will be absolutely a body or a bride, but that they will possess a blessedness corresponding to such relationships. The relationships apply to the redeemed, but suggest different considerations. We have seen that nothing can be nearer than oneness with Christ. Paul in Eph. 5:30, where he treats of our mystic union with Christ, does not leave it open to any doubt as to what the Church is, viz., “the body of Christ.” And the exhortation is that a man should love his wife (not because she is his bride, for that would be no argument at all), but because she is his own flesh, and no man ever yet hated his own flesh, though a man may hate his own wife. The argument goes on to say even as Christ loved the Church, and we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. THIS is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.
As to who and what the wife of the Lamb really is, we read in Rev. 20, that she is seen under the symbol of a city; itself called the bride, yet the abode of glorified beings. Here the word is most explicit. It is said of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that “God was not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city,” and that “they looked for a city;” or, as the word is, “the city;” that is the city par excellence― “a heavenly city, whose builder and maker is God.” “Doubtless,” says Dean Alford, “this same New Jerusalem.” Notably thus we find three distinct groups of saints whose histories we have in the Word―(1) Those from Adam to Abraham; (2) those from Abraham to Christ; (3) those from Christ crucified and ascended into heaven to His coming again. These all differ from each other in the character of their dispensation and hope. Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch, etc., knew nothing of the special promises of the earth and of the heavenly city, made to Abraham and his seed. And Abraham and his seed knew nothing of the body of Christ, the mystery so long hidden, but now revealed to us. But these all will have their place at the coming glory, and answer, I would suggest to the three groups spoken of in Heb. 12:22, 23, viz., “The spirits of the just men made perfect, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Church of the first-born.” If this be so we may ask, can they who thus inherit the city be excluded from the privileges implied by its name― “the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife?” That Abraham will have a special place and portion in the heavens in the day of the glory cannot be denied. Several Scriptures indicate this. But that the Church of God, as now called out, was the object before his faith when upon the earth, and what he looked for, as that which was signified by the promises made to him, is what the Scriptures nowhere teach. Still, though not looking for the Church as now called out, he was looking either for a place in Paradise, as we do now, or for this heavenly city on high which eclipsed the Canaan before his eyes, and which, as I have said, is to be viewed not only as the scene and home of future and eternal glory, but as the symbol of all those heavenly and glorified saints, myriads of such, it may be, who are singled out by God for this especial joy, bearing relationship of bride, even as, in another symbol, the Church is represented as being related to Christ as body with the Head. It is not so much oneness that is expressed by this emblem of bride as deep intimacy of love. That the city thus a symbol will also be the scene and home of future glory we know from what is said that God and the Lamb are in it. Moreover, those called to the marriage, the friends of the Bridegroom, are also there, as we sing―
“God and the Lamb shall there
The light and temple be;
And radiant hosts forever share
The unveiled mystery.”
And just as the idolatrous city of chapter 17 is portrayed as a woman, a mother of abominations, while she is yet the abode of demons, and will have on her the associated judgments not only of apostate Rome, but of idolatrous Babylon of old, and even of Babel itself; so this glorious city, whilst called the Lamb’s wife, the bride, and whilst the scene and center of all blessedness, will be, as we shall show, the glorious and final abode of all those who in all ages were redeemed through the blood of the Lamb, and who in their risen and glorified bodies will dwell with Christ, first over the millennial earth, and then, after the first heavens and the first earth have passed away, in the new heavens and the new earth of the eternal state. We would not go beyond the light God has given us; but I would suggest that if all the risen, glorified, and heavenly saints are not in this relationship of bride, which many assert they are not, then that relationship must be viewed with special reference to those who in past ages died in faith of it, to whom the Lord in His grace and love made it so precious and familiar, even whilst they were pilgrims and sufferers here; and that the Church, as the now called-out assembly which is His body, who have owned Him in His present rejection and humiliation, being one with Him, will be as He is in that blessed heavenly Salem, the light, the center, and the glory of it all. I do not dogmatically say that it is so; but that so it appears to me in the Word. Certain it is that there are many aspects of blessedness in the glory—one aspect of glory of the body, another of the bride, and another of those called to the marriage—the friends of the Bridegroom. But whilst one will differ from another in the glory, all will be glorious, being glorified together with Christ. Yet what the splendor of this marriage of the Lamb will be, and what the bliss indicated by this marriage scene, with all the friends in sympathy and joy assembled, we must wait to know. But some of the lineaments of the bride we shall consider when treating of the bride herself― “that great city, the Holy Jerusalem.”